1. Field of the Invention
This invention is directed to computer methods and apparatus for displaying numerical data, and more particularly to methods and apparatus for generating visual images from numerical data created by numerical simulations or collected from a measured environment.
2. Background of the Invention
Computer technology is being employed to analyze an increasing variety of scientific, engineering and business problems. Computer applications have been developed that numerically simulate a problem providing data on the response of a particular environment to certain stimuli or conditions. In addition, computer technology has made possible numerical analysis of data collected from certain measured environments. These environments include, for example, medical imaging technologies such as computer axial tomography (CAT) and nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR). Astronomy / astrophysics researchers use radio telescopes to collect large amounts of data for computer processing. The processing may include displaying multidimensional data in graphical or visual form.
The use of numerical models and numerical data collection techniques has been hampered by the problem of adequately presenting the results of the simulation or data collection to the researcher in an effective form for human understanding. Early simulations provided large printouts containing long columns of numbers. More recently, the results of simulations or numerical analyses have been commonly shown using graphical representations. The latest computer technology employs high resolution graphics workstations or specialized graphics terminals to display the simulated or measured data in a variety of readily understood forms.
Current advanced graphic display systems have the disadvantage of requiring sophisticated knowledge of graphics programming techniques to transform the results of a computer simulation or measurement into usable graphics output. Prior art systems also suffer from the limitation being oriented to the display of data in two dimensional formats similar to earlier printed plots. Without sophisticated graphics programming capabilities the researcher is unable to use the more advanced features of a graphics display system to glean the full value of the data.